Thursday, March 31, 2005 9:38 pm

CW1: A pool-diving pig, actually. Says here he belonged to something called Randall’s High-Diving Pig Show. Apparently he dived into a heated pool and was electrocuted.

CW2: Mmmmm-mmmm. Barbecue time.

CW1: I dunno, man. Electrocution might make the meat taste funny.

CW2: Good point there. I suspect that even the cleanest electricity is no match for the flavor of hickory smoke.

CW1: Yeah, tastewise, I think the best you could hope for would be that the electricity would cause the chlorine in the pool water and the sodium in the pig to bond ionically and give you something like salted pork. Only, you know, instantaneously, instead of being cured for months.

CW2: Maybe they could just serve him with cabbage.

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Tuesday, March 29, 2005 3:09 pm

I’m back from a business trip and digging out from under. (Also, Blogger has been misbehaving for the past couple of weeks worse than I’ve ever seen it do, and I’ve been a client for coming up on three years now.) More to say when I get time, which might not be for another day or two.

But all is well, and while waiting for me to post again you really should welcome my mate Nick Graham (an English exchange student at Davidson when I was there) to the blogosphere. His News From Beyond the North Wind will tell you, among other things, everything you need to know about Cumbrian politics: “Cumbria County Council elections are in May. I shall be standing on a platform of free surface-to-air missile ownership for all residents.” He’s got my vote.

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Wednesday, March 2, 2005 6:19 am

You know how eager young liberal arts graduates say “I’m a people person!” during job interviews to mask their lack of marketable skills? Well, I’m not a people person, and the older I get, the less of one I become.

Now, silly me, *I* always thought that this was just because I’m a jerk. But according to Lance Mannion, there’s a much more honorable reason: I am an artist!

Outstanding. Now I can say “Leave me the hell alone!” with a clear conscience. Wait’ll I tell my family.

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The Supreme Court has banned execution of minors, and frankly, there’s not a lot to hate about this decision no matter where you fall on the spectrum of opinion re the death penalty.

If you oppose the death penalty in its entirety, this is a major step in the direction of your goal, even if it doesn’t make additional steps inevitable (which it doesn’t). If, like me, you believe the death penalty is appropriate in certain cases, the elimination of executing minors as an issue makes it easier to focus attention on the cases in which execution isn’t just appropriate, it’s almost cried-out-for by humanity’s collective sense of justice and morality (say, for those surviving members of al-Qaeda involved in planning the 9/11 terror attacks).

And it just makes intuitive sense. We know that the brain structures and psyches and emotions of children and teens function vastly differently from those of full-grown adults. We wisely cordon off certain adult privileges from younger people for that very reason, although we’re not completely consistent about doing so. Barring the execution of minors doesn’t mean minors won’t be punished. It simply means that a juvenile killer might well live long enough to grasp and regret the consequences of his action in truly adult fashion, even if he’ll never have the chance to atone in the outside world. In most cases, he won’t have the chance to threaten anyone else, either.